Making Amazon rich while making myself poorer
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share my frustrations and experiences with Amazon FBA, as I'm sure many of you can relate. It seems like making a profit on Amazon FBA can be a real challenge with all these fees involved. I feel like I'm making Amazon richer while making myself poorer. Let's discuss this and try to make sense of it together.
I recently paid almost $1200 in advertising and only managed to generate $800 in sales. That alone is disheartening, but when you add in the FBA referral fees, FBA fees, and the professional seller fees, it's easy to see how the costs can quickly add up.
What really blindsided me, though, was the storage fee. I thought they would deduct this fee per unit, but it turns out it's charged per month! This was a significant issue for me, and it made me question the sustainability of my Amazon FBA venture.
I know I'm not alone in facing these challenges, so I'd love to hear from others who have encountered similar issues. How do you manage to turn a profit while dealing with all these fees? Have you found any strategies or tips that help offset these costs and make Amazon FBA more profitable for you?
Let's use this forum to share our experiences, frustrations, and ideas for navigating the complex world of Amazon FBA fees. Maybe together, we can find a way to make this business model work for us.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and insights!
Making Amazon rich while making myself poorer
Hey everyone,
I wanted to share my frustrations and experiences with Amazon FBA, as I'm sure many of you can relate. It seems like making a profit on Amazon FBA can be a real challenge with all these fees involved. I feel like I'm making Amazon richer while making myself poorer. Let's discuss this and try to make sense of it together.
I recently paid almost $1200 in advertising and only managed to generate $800 in sales. That alone is disheartening, but when you add in the FBA referral fees, FBA fees, and the professional seller fees, it's easy to see how the costs can quickly add up.
What really blindsided me, though, was the storage fee. I thought they would deduct this fee per unit, but it turns out it's charged per month! This was a significant issue for me, and it made me question the sustainability of my Amazon FBA venture.
I know I'm not alone in facing these challenges, so I'd love to hear from others who have encountered similar issues. How do you manage to turn a profit while dealing with all these fees? Have you found any strategies or tips that help offset these costs and make Amazon FBA more profitable for you?
Let's use this forum to share our experiences, frustrations, and ideas for navigating the complex world of Amazon FBA fees. Maybe together, we can find a way to make this business model work for us.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and insights!
2 replies
Blake_Amazon
Hey there @Seller_6qjWM7jQUQ28s, this is great feedback - I want to make sure you get the best guidance here as possible, so I would encourage you to post this in our Fulfill Orders category of the Forums where the folks there discuss FBA.
-Blake
Seller_rTBWL2OeoixkP
I've been selling on Amazon for 10 years. Every year they get worse. I tell EVERYONE that wants to start doing this, not to. I do not recommend selling on amazon to anyone.
For starters, seller support has to be the most incompetent group of human beings ever assembled for a single purpose in all of human history.
They're not capable of critical thinking or independent thought whatsoever. Your entire business is in the hands of what seem to be squirrels with jobs who don't understand anything you say to them. The REAL seller support is the executive team. But if we bombard them with cases, Amazon will just outsource that department overseas as well, and it'll be just as worthless.
Then we have FBA. The people who constantly lose your inventory, refuse to reimburse unless your invoice is the epitome of perfection, and then blame you for it. If they miscount and count more units than what you sent in, they blame you for that too. If they miscount and receive ZERO units, they blame you for that too. Yeah because i'm sure sellers love paying for shipping to send empty boxes to Amazon. Why would any of us send in ZERO units in a box?
And now we have this whole brand disaster that's been happening lately. Everything is an issue with brands now. I've been on listings for products from known brands, and a seller will come in, change the brand to a brand that doesn't even make sense, and now all of a sudden that listing is gated for me, and they're the brand owner. It's insanity. I've also been on listings that have been up for years, and a chinese seller will come in, change the brand, and now no one can sell it and they're the brand owner all of sudden.
Imagine that I go to a Nike listing, that has tons of sellers approved to sell Nike, and someone changes the brand to "Johns guava store" and now the listing is gated. This exact scenario happened to me recently and as usual, seller support was useless. I had to escalate to the executive team after weeks of cases.
Account health is a joke. I had a counterfeit complaint for ONE pair of sandals. I'm 100% FBA, this item was purchased 5 times but returned 4 times. And each time, Amazon would just put it under sellable and sell it again. So who knows what the customer returned. For a total net sale of 1 unit. 5-4=1. Simple enough. And I only ever sent in ONE unit. Well, my proof of authenticity was rejected because according to the account health rep, it did not reflect the amount of units I had sent in. I mentioned to her that I only ever purchased and sent one unit in, but it sold 5 time and was returned 4 times. She said that the "special team" overlooking this does not base it on sales. I told her I dont know where shes getting these imaginary units from then, and to please show me. She said only this "team" can show me.
Next day, that "team" emails me saying my invoice doesn't reflect the number of SALES for this item. After I JUST explained to them what happened, and after she JUST told me they don't base it on sales.
Amazon is the absolute worst. And I deeply regret dedicating the last decade of my life to this platform.
